The University of Birmingham Blocked Email Page

This page explains the reasons why your email may have been blocked. If your email has been blocked and you are reading this page, it is likely that your email was a legitimate communication with a member of the University. If so, please read the details below and follow the recommended course of action.

The University of Birmingham attempts to block Unsolicited Bulk Email (UBE, UCE, Spam). An SMTP error message pointing to this Web page is generated for each email message refused as a result of blocking. We use a variety of methods to combat this menace, the main ones being relay control and lists of addresses to block. If you were sending unsolicited bulk email all would appear to be working as intended.

Blocking Lists

We use externally maintained lists which contain known sources of UBE, known open relays/proxies or known dial-up numbers. Legitimate dial-up users will be unaffected if their email is correctly routed through their ISPs mail servers. If your email was blocked because of an external list you can look up which one at http://www.blocklist.bham.ac.uk.

In addition to these measures, we have locally maintained lists. Individual addresses can also be blocked from sending email to us if there is a problem with the sender which cannot otherwise be resolved. This could be unrelated to UBE and may be for security reasons, a result of other anti-social bevaviour or simply a technical matter such as persistent looping.

Relay Control

In general, only registered email systems at the University of Birmingham are permitted to use our mail hubs as a relay. A few other systems are allowed to under special arrangements.

Local Users

If you are a local (bham.ac.uk) user trying to send email and your error message indicated that relaying was prohibited, it is likely that you are using POPand SMTP to read and send email and your PC is incorrectly configured to use bham.ac.uk as the SMTP server. Advice on configuring PCs to use POP mail and SMTP is available here. If your PC is correctly configured or you login in order to use email your server may not be registered as a mail server, in which case you will need to ask whoever administers the server to register it as a mail server with Information Services.

These policies and the lists used are subject to constant review and change without notice.

If your email was not UBE and you cannot sort the problem out, or you wish to discuss our policies, please contact ( ) for help. Single messages to this address are not subject to blocking. Please note that the IT Service Desk is not a fowarding service, so please do not send messages for them to forward.

Chris Bayliss
Information Services
The University of Birmingham
16 July 2003